


won't let this guy out of my sight

by halfwheeze



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Buzzfeed: The Try Guys, Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Multi, haunted house au, mostly fluff tbh, they go to a haunted house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 20:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12802065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: this is a gift to my good friend jocelyn!okay, so joss gave me a prompt of protective!shane, and i ran with it. i also used http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/116140114429/imagine-person-a-from-your-otp-getting-separated from @otpprompts for further inspiration.





	won't let this guy out of my sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sectumsemprat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sectumsemprat/gifts).



> this is a gift to my good friend jocelyn!  
> okay, so joss gave me a prompt of protective!shane, and i ran with it. i also used http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/116140114429/imagine-person-a-from-your-otp-getting-separated from @otpprompts for further inspiration.

Ryan didn't even want to come to this stupid ass fucking haunted house, you know? It's an early birthday present for Steven made by his stupid boyfriends (Andrew and Adam aren't stupid, Ryan loves them, he's just mad), and Ryan didn't even want to come (also a lie, seeing as he didn't have any better ideas for Steve's birthday). Andrew and Adam did their best to invite a menagerie of Steven's friends, from Ryan himself to their shared friend Jen to some guy named Alex that Ryan doesn't know at all. It's just not fucking fair that he's the one who gets separated from everyone, and not Evan or Ben or someone.

Ryan wanders through the haunted house alone simply to avoid having a breakdown in public, because that would be really embarrassing. He's seen at least six little kids in here who seemed to be having the time of their lives, and if that isn't a blow to the confidence, Ryan isn't sure what is. He's walking along with a hand on the nearest wall when something jumps out at him, fast enough that he can barely bite off a scream. He doesn't realise he's freaking out until he's clinging to the person in front of him, which might be the most embarrassing thing he's ever done (and he's Ryan Bergara, he's done a fuckton of embarrassing things).

"Oh god, I'm so sorry, I got separated from my friends and I'm freaking out a little," Ryan explains in a tumble, looking up (and up and up) at the guy he's still clinging to because he can't seem to make himself stop. In the dim light, he thinks the guy is grinning, which is kinda reassuring, and he doesn't look like he could be that much older or younger than Ryan's own age. The guy puts his arm around Ryan's shoulders, which is kinda really nice, and leads him down the hallway before he even begins to reply.

"I got separated from my friends too, man. If you're scared of this stuff you should have been more careful, not that I can blame you, obviously. I'm Shane, by the way - why don't we get out of this thing together?" the guy - Shane - says, not leaving any space for replies between what he says, but Ryan doesn't mind. The timbre of his voice is distracting, and Ryan can feel it through their connected sides. He can even kinda hear the vibration of it from his head against Shane's chest. It's only in thinking the man's name that Ryan remembers his manners.

"Oh, god! I'm Ryan, by the way," Ryan introduces, scrubbing his hand across his face in embarrassment. Another horror jumps out at them and Ryan unabashedly hides his face in Shane's chest, feeling validated to do so in the fact that Shane squeezes his shoulders as he does. Shane leads him at a slightly faster pace and Ryan has to wonder when this shit will end, because he doesn't know how many more heart palpitations he can take (between the actual haunted house and the arm around his shoulders that's connected to a guy that he's realising is cute).

"Come on, Ryan, you can do this, I gotcha," Shane says, weirdly reassuringly, into Ryan's ear. Ryan nods and follows along, trying not to look too closely at the hopefully fake blood seeping out of the walls of this hallway by looking firmly at Shane's shoulder. Ryan nearly laughs as Shane starts walking a little faster, pulling him along. It's weird; normally, Ryan can't even think of laughter, or anything funny really, in places like this. There's an exit door at the end of the hallway that Shane corrals him toward, completely ignoring the guy that jumps out at them near the end.

"Where were you? Did you get - oh, you made a friend. Who's your friend, Ry?" Steven asks, just so soon as they exit the building of the haunted house. Ryan is grateful that Shane's arm doesn't immediately vacate his shoulders, because Ryan doesn't want to have to talk to his friends on his own. Steven's doing that smirk-smile thing where he thinks he's the cat that got the canary but he's too much of a sunshine child to pull off slick.

"Hi, I'm Shane. We both got lost, so we figured we'd make it out together," Shane explains, his voice casual but his shoulders tight. Ryan wonders what's making him so tense, but he's too relieved that Shane's not telling his friends that he got scared to really want to ask. Steven would never let him live it down if he heard that Ryan was clinging to someone to make it out of the haunted house, not when he's casually holding hands with his boyfriends, all three of them grinning peacefully. Even Brent looks like he had fun, and Brent is usually a party-pooper when it comes to spooky things.

"Shane! Where have you been?" a girl says, looking relieved and then immediately sly at having found Shane. Ryan knows immediately how she's going to take Shane's arm around his shoulders, and it almost makes him want to push it off of him - almost. "I see you made a friend," she adds, but the way she says friend makes it seem so much more salacious than when Steven had; Ryan doesn't know that Steven knows how to make things sound even remotely suggestive. He decides immediately that he's better off not knowing, and that Adam J Bianchi and Andrew Ilnyckyj are a blessing for not adoring overt PDA near so much as Steven does.

"Sara! Yeah, this is Ryan, we found each other in the house, both of us were lost, so we got out together," Shane summarizes, much the same as what he told to Steven and the rest of Ryan's friends in the first place. Sara, apparently, nods along but keeps that suspicious look in her eye, the one that says she knows just how cute Ryan thinks Shane is, just from the look on his face. He doesn't know how she would know but it's an idea that creeps under his skin, and one that stays. Three women and three men follow after Sara, rounding out the group that Shane must have been a part of.

"Ashly? This is what you had planned for tonight? You should have told us!" Andrew says suddenly, looking at one of the girls walking behind Sara. Supposedly Ashly laughs, coming closer and becoming a part of the greater group seamlessly. Somehow, part of Ryan thinks they all should have been one group to start with, but that's silly enough that he discards it. He doesn't know half of these people. He certainly doesn't know Shane, but that hasn't stopped him from cozying up to him - Ryan drops that thought too, though for other reasons entirely.

"Yeah, it's for Garrett's birthday! Are you here for Steven's? I know his is soon," Ashly asks, unreasonably astute with her apparent guess - Andrew simply nods with a grin. Ryan decides quickly that he likes her, if she remembers a friend's boyfriend's birthday just like that. She's the kind of friend that he would like to have, not that he doesn't have any so observant now. He just likes her. Two of the men with Sara and Ashly (and seemingly Shane) are familiar but Ryan can't quite place them. All he really knows about them is that they're holding hands, and looking incredibly as if they may start making out in the parking lot of a haunted house.

"Anyway, we're probably loitering, aren't we? We should take our leave," Sara says, going to move the lot of them along with their night's plans. Shane's arm tightens around Ryan's shoulders yet again, and Ryan can hear a protest before Shane even starts.

"Well, if you some of you guys know each other we could just - have you guys eaten dinner yet? We could all get dinner together," Shane suggests, all the casualness of an actor in his voice while his shoulders are still tense enough that Ryan can feel it. He begins to relax as nods roll through the small crowd of their friends, and relaxes fully when even Sara looks ready to agree. Shane's hackles go back up when the taller of the two men holding hands looks curiously at them, using the hand not connected to his partner to tap at his chin.

"And why are you so eager to join groups, Madej? Do you know any of them, or just Ryan?" the guy - Eugene!, his name is Eugene! Ryan knows him from his boyfriend, who's name is Zach! because he's friends with Adam - says with a suggestive eyebrow raise. Ryan is a little disappointed when Shane doesn't blush, but that might be because he's straight and Ryan is totally reading into this wrong and he should definitely stop being a little creepy. But, Shane still doesn't take his arm off of Ryan's shoulders, so he stops that crazy train on its tracks.

"I only know Ryan, yeah, but it looks like everyone else will enjoy themselves. Anyway, I don't really want to let this guy out of my sight just yet. Haunted houses and stuff, you know?" Shane replies, not really telling them that Ryan had gotten super scared, but implying it enough that Ryan wants to tuck his head back against Shane's chest. He doesn't, because Steven will definitely make fun of him at the very least, if not both of his boyfriends and Brent as well. Ryan doesn't really need to give them anymore ammunition than Shane already has.

"Alright! Let's go then! You guys okay with Korean barbecue? It's a little pricey," Andrew claps his hands as he says this, and Ryan shoots him a grateful smile. Andrew knows how bad his own boyfriend can be with the teasing and gives Ryan a subtle nod in response. With another round of nods, and there's a discussion of location that completely goes over Ryan's head as he zones out a little, until Shane's arm removes itself from his shoulders. He holds back from giving a verbal reply to the loss, but he wants to whine, an unusual impulse for him. Shane smiles like he knows, and Ryan blushes.

"I'll see at the restaurant, Ry. Save me a seat," Shane says, quiet enough that no one else can hear. Ryan grins and nods once, following his own friends to the cars the group of them had shared to get to the haunted house in the first place, climbing into the back of Steven's car with Adam. Knowing Steven's erratic driving, they would be the first to arrive so he sensibly could save Shane a seat. He decides that he will, if he can do so subtly.

And that's how he spends the rest of his night thigh to thigh with a lanky, hilarious jackass of a man. He gets to know Shane, gets to hear him laugh, gets to eat with him, celebrate with him, learn how Korean barbecue works with him. He learns that Shane Madej only celebrates other people's birthdays, doesn't believe in ghosts, resents the implication that tall people have no feelings, and loves Bigfoot like a long lost brother. Shane Madej is ridiculous and Ryan may just be infatuated with him, if it's not too fast to say. Shane's had an arm around his shoulders since he sat down.

When they leave, Ryan doesn't want this to be the end of the night, let alone the end of his relationship (if one could even call it that) with Shane Madej. Shane offers to drive him home so that Adam, Andrew and Steven can just leave, and Ryan says yes immediately. He hopes that Shane is feeling the same way, and this isn't just some one-sided thing. He hopes, ridiculously hard, that this shitty middle school ass crush is worth something.

"So what do you do for a living, Ryan Bergara?" Shane asks once they're in the car, buckled and ready to go to Ryan's apartment in midtown. Steven dropped Ryan's last name in the middle of a conversation about the birthday kids' previous embarrassments, being as Ryan is the very reason for several of Steven's own.

"I'm a photographer. Well, that and a youtuber, but the second one is less important. What do you do for a living, Shane Madej?" Ryan asks, remembering when Eugene had said it earlier. This is the first time he's been grateful about something Eugene has done in a while - he and Zach had been making out in the bathroom still when the rest of them had bounced. Shane laughs, and Ryan is awash in the sound of it.

"I'm a little bit of a director, but mostly I'm a bartender right now. What do you make videos about?" Shane asks, and he looks genuinely interested. Ryan likes that.

The conversation continues until they reach Ryan's apartment complex, sprinkled with laughter and sarcastic banter and things that would sound mean when said in any other tone of voice, maybe even by any other voice. Ryan barely wants to get out of the car when it's time, but it helps that Shane gets out too, follows him up to his apartment, continuing the conversation as normal.

"Shut up, Shane," Ryan says, wheezing with laughter as he unlocks his door, looking at their distorted reflection in the metallic apartment number. He gets an idea as he opens the door, stepping in.

"Give me one second, stay right here," he tells Shane, and though the taller man looks confused, he just nods. Ryan walks into the apartment and grabs a slip of paper from his desk along with a pen. He writes down his number, quick but clear, in his neatest handwriting.

"Text me sometime, Shane Madej," Ryan says, handing the other man the slip and going to kiss Shane's cheek. He succeeds, but when he tries to pull back, Shane's hands are on his face.

"I don't think I really want to let this guy out of my sight just yet," Shane whispers, and then their lips connect.

**Author's Note:**

> send me prompts, but mostly - wish a happy birthday to jocelyn! i love her.


End file.
